Thursday, June 2, 2011

DietsInReview.com posted a list of popular summer activities, and how many calories they burn. Here are the top four.

* Water Skiing. In 30 minutes, a 150-pound person burns around 200 calories. And it works your upper and lower body.

* Swimming. Depending on your body weight, just swimming around casually burns between 250 and 400 calories an hour. And if you swim laps, you can burn a lot more.

* Hiking. If you're 150 pounds, you'll burn about 400 calories on a one-hour hike, depending on how steep it is. If you weigh MORE than that, obviously you'll burn more calories, because each step requires more energy.

* Playing Nine Holes of Golf. If you walk AND carry your clubs, you'll burn around 700 calories, or 1,400 if you do 18 holes.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

So began the final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. After 25 years and 4,561 episodes, Winfrey bid farewell to her daytime talk show this afternoon. While there may not have been words to "match this moment," the hour was filled with other words: funny ones, sad ones, inspiring ones, and poignant ones.

"It is no coincidence that I always wanted to be a teacher. I ended up with the greatest classroom in the world. And this, my friends, will be our last class for this stage," she said. How was the class? Here's a recap, in quotes:

The Funny:

Winfrey recalled her first job on AM Chicago with no publicist and no stylist. All she had was "just a Jheri curl and a bad fur coat" and "earrings the size of napkins."

Talking about her childhood, Winfrey detailed her birth. Her parents were under the tree in Mississippi, she said, "and voila! Out pops me!"

"Don't wait for someone else to complete you. 'Jerry Maguire' was just a movie."

While celebrating with her audience as the credits rolled, Winfrey got extra excited when she saw one of her favorite people: Her dog. ""Sadie, we did it! We did it Sadie, we did it!"

The Wacky:

"Live from the heart of yourself"

"Your life is speaking to you. What does it say?"

"Nobody but you is responsible for your life. You are responsible for your life. What is your life? What is all life? What is every flower, every rock, every tree? Energy. And you're responsible for the energy you create for yourself, and you're responsible for the energy that you bring to others."

The Gracious:

"From Day 1, Chicago, you took me in... and you told your friends....I heard you say, 'Have y'all seen that black girl on TV named Oprah?'"

"You all have been a safe harbor for me for 25 years. What I hope is that you will be a safe harbor for someone else."

"To be embraced by all of you, it's one of the greatest honors a human being can have."

"Every day that I stood here I knew that this was exactly where I was meant to be."

"From you whose names I will never know, I learned what love is. And this show have been the great love of my life."

The Inspiring:

"There's a difference between thinking you deserve to be happy and knowing that you are worthy of being happy. Your being alive makes worthiness your birthright. You alone are enough."

Everyone has a platform, Winfrey said. "Mine is a stage in a studio. Yours is wherever you are, with your own reach."

"I've talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common -- they all wanted validation. ... They want to know, do you hear me? Do you see me? Does what I say mean anything to you?"

"This is what I was called to do...Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to find it."

Talking about how she got to where she is, Winfrey credited God. Which God? "I'm talking about the same one you're talking about. The Alpha and Omega. The Omniscience, the Omnipresent, the Ultimate Consciousness, the Source, the Force, the All of Everything There Is, the one and only G-O-D."

"You also have to know what sparks the light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world. You have the power to change somebody's life."

The Ugly Cry:

It's a fair bet that a large majority of viewers tuned in to the Oprah finale to cry. Not just cry, sob. Two segments of the show were especially emotional. Here are the monologues, with a few cuts.

Recalling how far she's come:

"But I'm truly amazed that I, who started out in rural Mississippi in 1954, when the vision for a black girl was limited to being either a maid or a teacher in a segregated school, could end up here. It is no coincidence that a lonely little girl [and here Oprah tears up] who felt not a lot of love, even though my parents and grandparents did the best they could -- it is no coincidence that I grew up to feel genuine kindness, affection, validation and trust from millions of you all over the world. From you whose names I will never know, I learned what love is. You and this show have been the great love of my life."

Signing off:

"Well, I say, all sweet, no bitter. And here's why. Many of us have been together for 25 years. We have hooted and hollered together, had our a-ha moments, we ugly-cried together and we did our gratitude journals. So I thank you all for your support and your trust in me. I thank you for sharing this yellow brick road of blessings. ...I thank you for being as much of a sweet inspiration for me as I've tried to be for you. I won't say goodbye. I'll just say, until we meet again. To God be the glory."

If you had a long weekend and you're a little drowsier than usual this morning, here are five quick ways to trick your body into waking up.

* Get a Few Minutes of Sunlight. Even if your office has a big window, it's better to get direct sunlight. So step outside for a few minutes. The fresh air helps too.

* Add Less Cream and Sugar to Your Coffee. It's not just the caffeine that wakes you up. It's also the bitterness. But a lot of people use so much cream and sugar it doesn't taste bitter at all.

* Pull Your Hair. If you tug on your hair gently, it gets blood flowing to your head and wakes you up. It might not work as well as a cup of coffee, but it'll help.

* Stretch Your Back, Neck and Legs. Don't do it in your chair. Stand up and stretch like you're about to go running. The point is to stretch really well so blood starts flowing through your entire body.

* Flip Your Head Upside-Down. While you're stretching, touch your toes and let your head hang in front of you. The massive rush of blood to your head can make you feel more alert. Just don't stand up too fast or it'll make you dizzy.

Friday, May 20, 2011

In celebration of the End of Days, the folks at MOVIEFONE compiled the five best apocalyptic scenarios they could think of while waiting in line to buy canned goods and bottled water. In the movies, things always go down in a fiery jumble of aliens, zombies, nuclear havoc or assault by asteroid, but don't fret, fair Moviefone readers. Space invaders aren't coming this Saturday, the Big Man Upstairs is -- and he knows how to turn water into wine.

Even though this should be self-explanatory, be warned, some violent and disturbing content follows.

Nuclear War:

Bombs go off in movies all the time, but a fictional nuclear tragedy has never felt more real than it did in James Cameron's 1991 smash 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day.' Rather than focus on the demolition of buildings, Cameron opted to show the explosion from Sarah Conner's (Linda Hamilton) point of view. And what she watching when the bomb went off? A playground full of children, of course.

Attack by Aliens:

Steven Spielberg has a complex relationship with aliens. Sometimes they are lovable and nice and remind everyone what it means to be a family ('E.T.'), and sometimes they are pretty awful. The aliens in the 2005 remake of 'War of the Worlds' fall squarely in the latter category. They're here to take over, and they brought massive tripods equipped with lasers that reduce us mortals to dust. Watch your back!

The Weather Turns On Us:

Remember when 'The Day After Tomorrow' came out and there were all those TV specials asking how realistic the story was? Do you remember the answer? It was "Well, it probably wouldn't be that fast, but yeah, it could kinda happen." Climate change has made the possibility of mega-storms a scary-real prospect, and director Roland Emmerich, no stranger to world destruction after 'Independence Day,' gave us a peek at what it could look like with 'Tomorrow.' As usual in films like this, things do not turn out well for New York City.

Asteroids/Comets:

Though our friends who are predicting this weekend's apocalypse might try and tell you that Satan created fossils to fool you, most scientists agree that a major impact by an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. A big one smashed into Earth (some say in the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula), sent a bunch of debris into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun and killing most of the plant life that sustained the food chain. Dino and his friends were kaput. So, it's only natural that the asteroid-meets-Earth scenario is a favorite way to scare audiences. In 30 short seconds, Paris bid adieu to the face of the planet when a big guy slammed into the city's center in 1998's 'Armageddon.' We're not sure what Jesus has planned for Saturday, but consider our telescopes pointed skyward.